Saturday, January 28, 2012

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SCHOOL REFORM

President Obama appeared on TV with his Secretary of
Education who outlined his objectives to revitalize the educational systems so as
to guarantee a more educated population of the future.

Sorry, but it is a failure before it starts.

My background is in education: I have taught elementary,
middle school and highs school, and I have been both an elementary and a high
school principal.

Let me address this policy from my point of view.

The new Secretary of Education comes from a background of
privileged schools. These are schools
that succeed and score high because the demographic is upper socio-economic,
and most parents have a college background.
The schools that are failing do not have the same demographic, the same
problems or require the same solutions; and I find the Secretary out of touch with these schools

The Secretary’s entire focus seems to be the same old trite mantra of blame the teachers: increase
certification requirements, reward the good teachers and get rid of the bad
teachers.

There are very few bad
teachers – but there are plenty of burned-out teachers. Teachers that enter the field of education
are definitely not motivated by income.
They tend to have an ability to teach, they pass strenuous requirements
and they hope to find working with young people rewarding.

The fallacy about bad teachers has been decried by
politicians and echoed by unsupportive parents. When I went to school, had the teacher or
principal called my grandmother and said I was misbehaving in class I would
have caught hell when I got home – the teacher would have been supported and
not vilified. This is not the case
today.

Teachers undergo the most strenuous oversight of any
occupation. They are required to
continue college courses in order to recertify every five years, and at inservices throughout the year and in the summer teachers are brought up to speed on the latest teaching techniques and philosophies. New teachers receive two formal evaluations
each year and tenured teachers receive at least one formal evaluation each
year. Teachers who are having a problem
are placed on improvement plans and assisted with improvement. A good principal not only conducts formal
evaluations but sits in on every class room at least a couple of times a month. Teachers are always under supervision.

There are occasionally superior teachers; but there are also
many good – in the trenches – teachers that teach to the curriculum and do
their best, under adverse conditions, to care and educate their young
wards.

More than likely your child’s teacher is better educated than your local bank president, and yet works for a salary more comparable to skilled labor. The Secretary stated the need to drastically increase the
salary of teachers in order to attract other highly qualified people who tend
to go into more lucrative fields. This
is needed, but where does the money come from?

The Secretary also
promoted performance pay – this is not only demoralizing to other teachers but
also will tend to go to the teachers in the more productive (elite) schools
that continue to excel in test scores.

The fallacy is, that here again, we are setting up a one
size fits all education outline which is contrived by elite educators and unqualified
politicians and that is not suited to all public school demographics.

In the average public school, and particularly the schools
in crisis, the major problem is that children come into the system unprepared
to learn. These children have poor
social skills and are backed by parents unwilling to take responsibility for
their child’s behavior. These children
know that bucking the teacher will result in little or no consequence; therefore,
classroom behavior has become the major problem for every teacher. Some of the children are in school to learn;
but for many, disrupting the classroom is the goal that will result in peer
approval. Some of these children are actually dangerous. There are few tools that
teachers have to command discipline, and without a disciplined class room
requisite learning is impossible.

The failure to maintain discipline in the classroom is often
the fault of the principal, and by extension the superintendent. Without a strong principal to back the
classroom teacher, a knowledgeable teacher can be barbarized by the students,
humiliated by the parents and unable to impart the required subject
matter.

Here is the rub: the principal and superintendent hold
political positions and are hired and fired at the whim of the school board;
therefore, principals (and superintendents) tend to placate irate parents
instead of backing the classroom teacher in a controversy.

School boards are not made up of educators, but most often of
parents who have an axe to grind or local politicians looking for an addition
on their resumes. These board members
don’t have the education background or the in-class-room experience to
understand the complexities of class room teaching. My last school board was far more concerned
(and militant) about why certain children were not eligible to play basketball,
than supporting teachers and increasing learning. The monthly school board meetings were always
more like an inquisition than a cooperative learning exercise.

Now we come to testing: I have taught school in the Eskimo and Indian
villages of the Alaskan Bush. In these
villages grandparents speak the traditional language, parents and children
speak a bastardized mixture of English and Native language – yet on the test
they are expected to read and write and comprehend in highly stylized
English. A few can get past this
hurtle, but many can’t. So, instead of
the children being evaluated by twelve years of education within a cultural
perspective, we condemn many of these children to failure. Is it fair to that Native children and
children from other cultural perspectives to be denied a diploma, and thereby
denied other opportunities for growth and development in adult life, because
they can not meet some arbitrary standard devised by politicians and the
educational elite?

It is not rocket science:

We need 100% Federal financing of public schools.

If we took the money we spend on maintaining the largest and
most expensive military in the world and divert it to educating our children the
problem would be solved. The main answer
for increasing educational outcome for all of our children is a smaller student-to-teacher
ratio. More highly paid teachers in a
classroom with a maximum of twelve children would insure the one-on-one time
necessary to advance each student. In
low performing schools the student-to-teacher ratio should be smaller.

There is also the necessity to set a high standard of order
and discipline in the classroom by removing disruptive student. There should be highly structured alternative
public schools available for the assignment of habitually disruptive students. Difficult parents of disruptive students would
always have the option of enrolling their child in a private school (at their
own expense.)

Finally we need to do away with local school boards and have
schools run by non-elected educators. Superintendents
and principals need to be judged on performance not popularity. Expectations of Superintendents and
principals need to be increased and teacher performance will follow.

It is as simple as where we place our priorities:

We spend more of our National Budget maintaining our massive military than every other country in the world spends on their military - combined. Likewise, we spend far less on the education
of our children than most other advanced countries. True educational reform of public schools will be costly - a tweek here and a tweek there will not solve the problem.

Educational reform is a political talking point, but the will to actually tackle the problem does not exist.

The rich and well to do of this country are not concerned
about the standard of education of their children – they will have the best education
money can buy. These same people are
not particularly concerned about the war fodder being matriculated through our
public schools – though they speak to “the problem.” We have in this country a disconnect
between the have and have not’s. And, as long as the focus of our government
is to placate the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, serious
educational reform of public schools will remain a political talking point and our
education system will continue to decline.

4 comments:

"The rich and well to do of this country are not concerned about the standard of education of their children – they will have the best education money can buy. These same people are not particularly concerned about the war fodder being matriculated through our public schools – though they speak to “the problem.”

This is the crux of it, isn't it? The controllers of our society do not want the masses well educated. A well educated population is less likely to be easily manipulated. My opinion, or course.

Certainly agree with every word of this article. Doing away with schoolboards would be a good move and taking the control away from local legislatures would help to. Arizona and Texas come to mind.Teachers work very hard for little thanks. And you KNOW that the kids who cause problems will have parents who will cause problems.How do we get this article to go viral?

This strikes me as another problem that most don't want to solve as they will lose their "talking points".

The rich and the GOP don't want an educated populace as they are harder to control and the better educated, the less likely to vote GOP.

I've read many articles on how great the schools are in Finland, which makes me proud of the land of my ancestors. There teachers are respected, well paid and have a master's degree before being allowed to teach alone. They also have the support and help of other teachers where they work together to make sure the kids learn. That'll never happen here in the land of "Let's find the lowest cost solution"!!

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